Do 3.5" HDD Read Heads Park? Need to Ship External Drive..

wooderson

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I have a Hitachi Deskstar HDT721010SLA360 1TB internal drive that I put in a Rosewill external case. I need to ship it to Denver, and then have it shipped back to me. Do these drive read heads park, like most 2.5"'s do?

It should be ok to ship if I pack it decently, right?
 

Ignatowski

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im pretty sure all drives built in the last 10 years auto park the heads when powered off.
 
They park, but not necessarily on a ramp. They park on a section of the disk without data. It should still be OK to ship though, as long as you pack it decently. For example, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 desktop drive is rated for up to 350G of nonoperating shock, which is actually quite an impact.
 

505090

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To my knowledge all hd's park the head. If there was a problem with shipping them i doun't think there would be so many online retailers shipping hd's all over the country.
 

mikrev007

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Yes, all harddrives park. In old days it just had to be done manually by issuing a command to the harddrive. Today it is done when the power goes out.
 
For a long time, all drives use a spring loaded voice coil positioner instead of a stepper motor. When the power goes off, spring retracts the head assembly so that the heads automagically land on an unused portion of the hard drive.
 
You will have to fill out an RMA. It should specify EXACTLY how you have to return it to the manufacturer.

My Seagate was very specific and not doing this would void my return.

This might be the link:
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.4e6284c20a3050a7760062f6aac4f0a0/